Themes in Torchwood
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Science fiction and crime drama Torchwood discusses many themes in its narratives, specifically dealing with LGB themes associated with its homosexual and bisexual characters and their problems, with various characters portrayed as sexually fluid. Certain characters offer varying perspectives on orientation, although the nature of Jack, Ianto and Toshiko's sexual flexibility is not discussed explicitly.
In addition to these, there is some discussion of the value of human life, the corrupting nature of power and of existentialism through parallels drawn between characters with the repetition of thematically important lines in the course of series one.
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[edit] Homosexuality and bisexuality
Torchwood deals with several LGB themes, specifically bisexuality. Each of the main characters in Torchwood has same-sex encounters at some point in the first season,[1] with The Sun describing all of the characters on Torchwood as bisexual.[2] Series creator Russell T. Davies has said that he hopes to defy audience expectations of monosexual characters:
| “ | Without making it political or dull, this is going to be a very bisexual programme. I want to knock down the barriers so we can't define which of the characters is gay. We need to start mixing things up, rather than thinking, 'This is a gay character and he'll only ever go off with men.'[1] | ” |
Davies has also described Jack Harkness as omnisexual:
| “ | He'll shag anything with a hole. Jack doesn't categorise people: if he fancies you, he'll do it with you.[3] | ” |
Similarly, Toshiko Sato describes Jack as someone who'll "shag anybody as long as they're gorgeous enough!". In Everything Changes, Ianto Jones jokingly refers to Jack's appreciation of his good looks in a suit as sexual harassment. At the end of They Keep Killing Suzie, Ianto subtly presents Jack with a sexual proposition, which the latter appears only to understand after a few seconds - he accepts by telling Ianto to meet him in his office in ten minutes, once the rest of the team have left the Hub. This is again alluded to in the Instant Messenger Transcript provided on the official website, which represents a conversation between the pair in the time remaining before their tryst.[4] Earlier in the same episode, Jack claims to have had a sexual relationship with two brothers, both acrobats; however, it is unclear whether he is speaking sincerely or simply trying to distract Gwen from asking difficult questions. Ianto and Jack's relationship is referred to by Owen in Captain Jack Harkness and displayed for the first time in End of Days in which Ianto and Jack kiss after finding Jack is alive.
In Captain Jack Harkness, a subplot of the episode revolves around Jack's namesake's sexual orientation. His uneasy behaviour and his dismay at having convinced his girlfriend that they were in love combined with his flirtatious interaction with Jack suggested he was gay and trapped in an unwanted heterosexual relationship, unable to come out in his era. At the episode's climax, at a dance and knowing he was going to die the next day, the two Jacks danced and kissed, to the amazement of the 1940s guests all around them, before they had to part.
In Everything Changes, Owen Harper seduces a woman and then her boyfriend using alien technology. Gwen Cooper has a boyfriend, but she reciprocates the advances of a sex-driven alien in a woman's body in Day One, albeit under the influences of alien-enhanced pheromones. Later in that episode, when the possessed woman attempts to absorb the orgasmic energy of various men at a sperm bank, one of them briefly protests that he's gay. Toshiko also exhibits bisexual behaviour: she carries a torch for her teammate, Owen, but in Greeks Bearing Gifts she has a sexual relationship with "Mary".
[edit] Existentialism
Torchwood contains numerous existentialist themes including the meaning of life and the possibility of an afterlife. Suzie Costello tells Gwen in They Keep Killing Suzie that there is no meaning to life and that "we're just animals howling in the night." The nihilistic Mark Lynch describes his fellow regulars at the Weevil "fight club" as "ordinary blokes trying to find meaning in a world that doesn't have any" - hence their hobby of cage-fighting tortured captive Weevils. Mark Lynch tells Owen that the latter are not aliens but what "we" (i.e. humans, or perhaps only men) will be in a thousand years, "when we have nothing left but our rage." Toshiko also compares humans to Weevils when the pendant Mary gives her allows her to read minds causing her to fall into deep depression and utter disappointment with existence.
The issue of mortality is also a common existentialist theme in Torchwood, raised through repeated discussion of and reference to the possibility or impossibility of an afterlife. For example, episode one features Jack questioning a recently deceased, though temporarily resurrected, man on the afterlife, who is shocked to discover he can remember nothing. Episode three, Ghost Machine presented the scientific view that ghostly phenomena were due to imprints of strong emotions on time. In They Keep Killing Suzie, Suzie Costello, a recurring villain, states she can remember nothing having been resurrected. She says that "there's something moving in the dark" and it is after Jack. During episode eleven, Combat, Mark Lynch also tells Owen about something coming "in the darkness." In episode ten, Out of Time, Jack warns a suicidal man that on the other side there is absolutely nothing: "It just goes black." In episode 9 Random Shoes, Eugene Jones dies but remains on earth as a ghost until he has saved the life of and subsequently kissed Gwen Cooper, with whom he was in love: this done, he is able to "move on", ascending - the final frame is black; it is left unclear what this symbolises.
In the season finale, End of Days, Jack expresses existentialist sentiments regarding the religious referring to the apocalypse. Continuing the ghost theme carried in several episodes of Torchwood, what appear to be the spirits of Lisa and Toshiko's mother appear, as well as Diane who may be dead or trapped in another time. Toshiko's mother warned of something "coming in the darkness", as Suzie Costello had done before. It is left unclear whether these were spirits or the machinations of the villain, Bilis Manger, as they urged Torchwood staff to do as he desired. In the episode's climax, biblical demon Abaddon is released from his prison beneath the Rift only to be defeated by Jack.
This is contrasting with optimistic themes presented in parent series Doctor Who, where frequently the idea of life being "beautiful", and individual existence being significant is touched upon. Also contrasting in Doctor Who are the explicit examples of destiny and theism in the narrative, presented by the characters of the Black Guardian and White Guardian (both of whom are apparently representatives of an even higher power) and the Beast, who claims to have been imprisoned by a group called the 'Disciples of Light,' a name that echoes traditional Christian and Zoroastrian theology.
[edit] Value of human life
In several episodes, particularly revolving around the character of Jack Harkness, the value of human life is touched upon with Jack depicted as willing to sacrifice, murder and assist in suicide in several episodes. In episode five, Small Worlds, Jack allows a small girl to be sacrificed to the "fairies" to save the world. Episode four, Cyberwoman, has him kill Ianto's girlfriend Lisa, with full certainty she was no longer human. In Countrycide, he tells one of the cannibal villagers that he used to be a professional torturer, though of course this may simply be a lie calculated to intimidate the man. In They Keep Killing Suzie, Jack riddles Suzie Costello with bullets, claiming responsibility for her death - "Death by Torchwood". It is implied that Jack would like to die, and he seems sympathetic when others wish to end their own lives: in Out of Time he holds the hand of a man who wants (but is afraid) to die, and in Combat he turns his back to allow Mark Lynch to surrender himself into the claws of a Weevil.
[edit] Corruption
Starting in episode one, with the character of Suzie Costello and continuing primarily with neophyte employee Gwen Cooper, the theme of corruption is present in the narrative, frequently drawing parallels between Suzie and Gwen. In the aforementioned pilot, Suzie comments on how you cannot go back from working for Torchwood, suggesting it has changed her, after she commits a series of murders and an eventual suicide. Later in the series, Gwen finds herself unable to tell her boyfriend Rhys about her double life, and finds herself drawn into a sexual relationship with teammate Owen in Countrycide - as had Suzie before her, revealed in They Keep Killing Suzie. Gwen laments that as Suzie had said, Torchwood had changed her, and in Greeks Bearing Gifts, she explained to Toshiko that she knew what she and Owen were doing was wrong, but that she had no intention of stopping.
In They Keep Killing Suzie, the team is shocked to learn that Gwen is the only person other than Suzie who possesses a sufficient degree of empathy to operate the resurrection gauntlet. A resurrected Suzie explains she would drug people with amnesia pills to tell them about her life - in Combat, Gwen drugs Rhys as she confesses her affair with Owen so she can receive his forgiveness but not have to live with what she's done, echoing Suzie's actions. In the finale, End of Days, after Rhys is murdered, Gwen fights Jack for the rift manipulator so that she may resurrect him, going as far as to hit Jack and even allow Owen to shoot him. In the episode's conclusion, with the rest of the team, she receives Jack's forgiveness as he understands she had been manipulated by villain, Bilis Manger.
Characters other than Gwen have had their morality tested. Ghost Machine depicts Owen filled with rage after experiencing a young woman's rape, capable of murdering her rapist. In Combat, having lost his lover Diane, Owen succumbs to a nihilistic underground belly in which he attempts suicide-by-Weevil. Toshiko, consumed with the loneliness of her job, falls under the spell of a seductive but evil alien in Greeks Bearing Gifts. Ianto, unable to let his dying girlfriend go, risks the life of his entire team in Cyberwoman, even threatening to one day betray his future lover, Jack. In End of Days, Jack berates his entire team for their destructive personal lives, at which point Owen shoots him, answering questions as to whether or not Owen is actually capable of murder.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Martin, Daniel (October 2006). "Jack of Hearts". Gay Times (337).
- ^ Sarah Nathan (September 2006). Dr Ooh gets four gay pals. The Sun. Retrieved on 2006-10-06. “GAY Doctor Who star John Barrowman gets four BISEXUAL assistants in raunchy BBC3 spin-off Torchwood.”
- ^ Williams, Andrew. "60 Second Interview : John Barrowman", Metro, 2006-11-02, hard copy 2006-11-03. Retrieved on 2006-11-03.
- ^ Torchwood External Hub Interface - Jack and Ianto instant messenger transcript
